Sizy, Sergey | TiL Forum

Lighting Design School LiDS, Director

Sizy, Sergey | TiL Forum

Lighting Design School LiDS, Director

Biography

Sergei is Lighting Designer with 13 years of expertise, the author of the «emotional design theory», the «pyramid of human needs in lighting» and «classification of styles in lighting design». The founder of Russia’s first lighting design school (LiDS) and International lighting design studio (LiDStudio). Sergey Sizy is associate member of the IALD.

Emotional Design and Its Role in Lighting Design

The lecture covers an importance of emotional component of perception and the role of lighting in its formation, as well as provides practical guidance on the application of emotional design principles to the process of lighting design concept development.

Nowadays people are used to living in a comfortable environment, which simply meets their functional needs: read or write, work or relax, walk or sit. Therefore people are looking for something more: they want to feel, communicate and express themselves. Changing needs requires to rethink the design goals in creation of an environment that along with the functionalily evokes certain emotions. Our emotional perception depends on the visual space assessment, which is impossible without light. Consequently, lighting is an essential element for perception formation, both visual and emotional. Moreover, lighting, thanks to a possibility of switching scenarios, solves the problem of emotional dynamics that cannot be overcome by any other design tools. Thus, the lighting design has all the prerequisites for becoming the main driving force behind the development of emotional design ideas.

This theory has spawned an algorithm to design lighting concept, which includes the following steps: objects and users analysis, period of use; determination of required lighting scenarios and composition of an appropriate emotional and visual essence; selection of lighting modes required to achieve the desired emotional reaction. Based on these steps a lighting designer selects an appropriate type and method of illumination and chooses necessary equipment for concept implementation. However, there might be a problem of subjective perception on the path of using this theory. Nevertheless, the right selection of visual essence, based on evolutional (natural) and cultural levels of associated perception, which excludes personal associations of the designer or individual users, can solve this issue.

It is also worth adding that stage of formalization of selected images has a special importance and is based on experiments carried out by Moscow Lighting Design School. Those experiments shows that even a significant simplification of the image, which completely eliminates its meaning, almost entirely preserves the vector of its emotional impact on the viewer. These studies have identified a list of the main formal tools to transfer the image to the lighting design concept, including: the amount of light (illuminance or brightness), qualitative indicators of lighting performance (color temperature or color of light, color rendering index), the spatial characteristics (light distribution, direction of the luminous flux , uniform and localized lighting) and time factors (duration and frequency of exposure of light on the observer). In future this concept cam make a significant contribution to the development of lighting design in the world.